Woz offers lessons on how to innovate (video)

Steve Wozniak made an appearance this week at the Computer History Museum, which is opening a $19 million exhibit Thursday entitled, Revolution: The First 2,000 Years of Computing. In front of the Homebrew Computer Club section, the co-founder of Apple talked about all of the artifacts that were created in the early era of personal computers.

In elementary school, Woz started toying with transistors, building tic tac toe games. He taught himself to design the minicomputers of the day and was eventually able to design a computer in a couple of days. But he couldn’t afford to build one until the price of chips became affordable in 1975. Then he and Steve Jobs started Apple, and the rest is history.

To innovate, Woz suggests that everyone start with a goal of what they want to achieve. They don’t need the roadmap on how to get there immediately; since if you have a full roadmap, your goal is probably too easy to achieve. Be an artist, he said, and figure out how to get to that goal in the best way you can. Be clever, and “write the book yourself”.

Not everyone is an innovator, Woz says. But every innovator is curious.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs1vR-0-WdU&w=640&h=390]